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The White Flame of Sculpture 



The White Flame 
of Sculpture 



BY 

L. P. 



P 




Cedar Rapids, Iowa 
The Torch Press 
Nineteen Hundred Nine 






UBRAR? of CONGRESS 
Two Gopiet Received 

DEC 31 ISOti 

i .» Cepyrient tntry _ 

fertutRS 



Copyright, 1908 



Oh, spirits twain that walked with me, 
Whose lofty souls of living flame 
Have burned me clear of every aim 

Of lower mark, and set me free ; 

Receive the broken shards I bring. 

Your hands have thrilled to life the 
clay; 

Your souls have grasped the soul alway 
Half -hid in line and curves that cling 

And melt. The heights divine, that fling 

Their shadows out from arch of brow, 

You long have swept, with eyes that 

grow 

More clear to pierce the veil, the thing 

5 



Invisible to see; — the God, 

The Infinite, th' Eterne, that dwells 
In clay of His own mould ; that swells 

In every pulse of flesh and blood. 

My Friend who dwells beyond the stars, 
I dare not guess to what far height 
Your vision clear, your deep insight, 

Are rapt. The Love that never mars 

Uplifted you. I question not 

Of work half done, of heights half won. 

God 's light — of neither moon nor sun - 
Falls soft upon your happier lot. 

My Friend who dwells below the stars, 
Upon your heart is laid the fire 
Of whitest, holiest art. Still higher 

"Will flame the torch, wind-blown by airs 

Of heaven. "With oil and wine of life 
Deep-drenched; with spices bitter- 
sweet 

6 



Enwound ; most costly, rare, and meet 
For service high, it flames. Through 
strife 

And night, God guard your flying feet, 
God give you steady hand to bear 
His beacon light. His visions rare 

Your prize ; His haunting voices sweet, 

That call you ever from afar ; 

That call to work more pure and 
high; 

That call to heights serene, that lie 
Beneath the white light of your Star. 



THE WHITE FLAME OF 
SCULPTURE 

It is an art that demands the divinest 
powers, in their most magnificent play. 

She is a stern, a mighty mistress ; not 
to be served with aught but the whole 
man — soul and body. 

So served, God knows how she will 
fill and expand and overwhelm the soul. 

Thank God her powers of expression 
can never be found too narrow ; they will 
stretch away before you like eternity 
itself. 



I think one of the most significant 
things ever said about this art is, that 
9 



"You now have no time to hurry in 
your life." 

Nothing shows more clearly the truth 
of your art than that. It can no more 
be hurried than God hurries the mak- 
ing of the earthly tenement of a soul. 
It ripens in its own time and comes to 
the birth. 



I always see a form more beautiful 
than I can describe, in the far distance, 
against the setting sun. 

It means everything to me; love, art, 
adoration — one who looks at God. 

It is sculpture, and it is colorless. 



The State should endow its genius, 
and the time will come when this will 
be done. Heaven knows the men are 
rare enough, and when found, they 

10 



ought to have the way made smooth. 
I understand the value of such circum- 
stances as urge the development of gen- 
ius, but I know too that orchids will 
not grow among wayside stones. 



I seem to be in a dream for days; 
whether in the body or out of the body 
I can scarce tell. 

Each day, life grows more wonderful. 

Strange glimpses of another world 
seem to open to me. These souls that 
fill us with awe and rapture: Shelley, 
Keats, Angelo, Dante, — the great souls 
to whom we are akin, and who draw 
us after them into the infinite; where 
are they? 

And it makes the work here seem small 
— although we long so infinitely to ac- 
complish it. 
// 



I am unwilling almost to use the word, 
"art;" the word, "God" comes always 
instead. 



I think I know to some degree what 
it must be — this possession, this crea- 
tion, this birth agony, and strange de- 
light. 

I can well believe the work that 
leaves such a hand has life, has soul; 
how could it be otherwise? 

"What has been felt and lived so in- 
tensely, others will feel. They cannot 
help it. It seems to be a law of the 
best-, this power to make itself felt and 
believed. 



Some lives seem spent on the rushing 
wings of the whirlwind, such is the ra- 
pidity and force with which they are 

12 



borne along, both by the course of events 
and by their own spirit. 

But when I remember the times of 
enforced quiet and stillness with which 
they alternate, and the depth of the 
spiritual life, I know that the balance 
is kept and no harm is done — if only 
the merely physical strength is not over- 
thrown. 

I have the greatest possible confidence 
in this self-regulating power of some 
temperaments — called artistic. 

If I did not feel that I understood 
the secret of the whirlwind it would 
doubtless frighten me; but it has its 
point of central calm; and there is a 
sense — and it is the deepest, truest, and 
most vital one — in which I have simply 
no fears for such an one. 

God knows what He is about when 
He creates such souls, and there is a 
13 



point where all interference with them 
should cease. They must find their own 
methods. 

The quiet time will come, bearing its 
own fruit with it. 



Another thing: I think any one who 
understands, feels, the real creative force 
at work, knows how absolutely absorb- 
ing it is. It cannot be done at arm's 
length. It takes for the time — the 
whole man — or woman — to the last 
fibre. 



It is Grod — at work. Is that cloud 
of fire to be rent with — details? 



Whither can these souls go that I can- 
not follow? Their utmost flight cannot 
outstrip my own power of wing. 

14 



Their whitest thought, their perfect 
forms, their visions of beauty; do I not 
see them too? feel them with utter ab- 
sorption ? 



Nothing penetrates to the same God- 
like depth with me. Where I can do 
nothing, there I feel most powerfully. 

Every line of the flesh grasps me in 
its hold like a giant. 

Music, words, color, are faint and 
pale beside it. The pulsing of that 
white radiance is God. 



This sky — changing with swift rush- 
es or soft lapses from the rosy flood 
of morning to the white heats of full 
noon. Changing again into the golden 
curtains of the evening and the soft 
15 



depths of the night — full of stars: 
wherever you go, the sky bends over you, 
deep — loving. 

I hold yet in my heart some of the 
golden, level bars of the sky of Italy; 
the flood of blue and gold over the bay 
of Naples ! The after glow of Florence ! 
The soft, soft, tender light of the skies 
off shore in the Mediterranean. 

It seems as though the tints of my 
love for this art melted and changed 
like that — into the solemn stillness of 
the midnight, where only God is. 



"Let me feel the stars. " Never shall 
I forget the night those words rose into 
my soul. 

It was on a night train; I could not 
sleep, and those deep, throbbing, burn- 
ing stars beat into my soul with pulsa- 

16 



tions that took possession of my utter- 
most capacity. 

Each one seemed to throb through me 
— unto G-od! 



I have been in that land. Its wonders 
cannot be told; it is God's own. 

Each moment of such living is worth 
years of other life. 

Have you ever, in the intense warmth 
of a moonlit summer night — such as 
comes very rarely — felt the moonlight- 
ed air entering all the pores of your 
body; bathing your soul, caressing all 
care away, until you feel yourself akin 
to all things impalpable; alive to that 
which can never be said or sung ? That 
land — -that moonlit air — "Dahin! da- 
hin!" It is the land of Mignon; it is 
the land of those, who, having entered, 
sigh for naught beyond. 
17 



The Greeks inscribed on their work, 
"He was making." It is the only true 
way. It is God's way. Does He ever 
finish a life — that we can see? And 
are not those powerful, suggestive, un- 
finished strokes of the master hand worth 
far more than the completed Eaphaels? 

I prefer a Masaccio sketch to a fin- 
ished Eaphael, and Mantegna's "Para- 
diso" is full, full of Heaven. It brims 
over with its strong, seraphic faces. I 
love it among the best. 



"Oh, God, let me dream into Thee!" 
God's dream, deep, ecstatic, eternal. 
The dream of which His whole creation 
is the expression. The dream which is 
the only truth; the heart of the Para- 
disal Eose. A "pain carved face?" 
Yes. It is ever so with the "beauty 
seeking. ' ' 

18 



It is Orpheus and Eurydice. It is 
the search through Hades ; the touching, 
piteous, tender, God quest. 

A dreamer? Yes. The dreamer who 
sees for us the things that are truer 
than any other truth; the only things 
that endure; the things that carry God 
into our lives and souls; the radiant, 
solemn, dream truth. 



Eest and content can only come to 
these souls as to the sweeping sea-gull 
— when, after the strong flight upward, 
it spreads the broad, snowy wings and 
floats downward, motionless. Its rest 
is the tossing wave, which it rides in 
perfect peace. 



The sudden modulations in Wagner's 
music ! How often he will bring a whole 
19 



flood of harmony down, just half a note, 
perhaps, and sweep it into another key. 

That always reminds me of the faint 
softening or deflection of a full curve 
in a statue — some of those beautiful 
lines of the thigh from front to back. 

That is one of the delights of Wagner. 

And to watch statuary while music is 
playing, is, to me, one of the supremest 
delights in life. 



How perfectly inexorable is this law 
of right, and the highest, and the best. 
We cannot get away from it if we would. 

We must come to it and grow into it ; 
readily, nobly, if we will; but scourged 
into it with a thousand stripes if we 
will not. 

I believe every soul will come into it, 
in the end. It cannot be avoided, be- 
cause it is the only principle of life. 

20 



Everything else dies of its own na- 
ture; sooner or later it must cease to 
exist. 



I saw a face today that made a strong 
impression. A cab passed quickly in 
which sat a priest — known by his dress. 

Strong, fine, intellectual, and with a 
look in the face of a soul that had 
fought and conquered — perhaps the 
powers of hell. One of those faces of 
which even a passing flash makes you 
stronger, lifts you higher ! This had the 
look ' ' God satisfied and earth undone ! ' ' 
— the look of terrible battle and great 
victory — as though nothing could hurt 
any more. 

How God carves faces with handwrit- 
ing of His own. 



That is the wonderful, inexplicable 
part of genius. It is male, it is female ; 
2/ 



it feels all the things out of sight ; all the 
"perfect round" of life. 

It knows the mysteries wherewith life 
is filled, but which so many hearts and 
minds pass by in utter unconsciousness. 

It is a larger endowment of life and 
it knows all its phases ! It absorbs from 
everything its soul and makes it part 
of its own. The soul of a man ; the soul 
of a sunset; the soul of a woman; the 
soul of a breeze or a tempest. 



To me, art and love mean one thing 
and both mean God. 



I was once in the "Garden of the 
Gods" in Colorado, which is full of won- 
derful, wave worn rocks of red sand- 
stone. They look as if a sea had re- 
treated and left them there. There is 
precisely the same effect in the Ilissus. 

22 



The anatomical forms have the sink and 
sag that suggest a wave worn rock. A 
print does not show it as a cast does. 
He looks as though water had washed 
over him for centuries. 

There is nothing of this in the Theseus, 
which is tense and strong and full of 
nerve and power. 



In the clash of one soul upon another 
soul, or in the meeting which is no clash 
but a "solution sweet/' so much is 
evolved of whose existence we had no 
idea. 



"Why are we so like children and 
horses ; afraid of what we cannot under- 
stand? We cannot understand the sim- 
plest things and God surrounds our days 
with mysteries. 
23 



It is only much in life that I fear, at 
times. I fear nothing in love or in 
death; they are holy twins. 






The one great, living fact, the blessed 
reality is Love — over, above, and be- 
yond, all else. Life and death are illu- 
sions and chimeras in its presence. It 
is God's one Fact. 



One most vital cause, among many 
others, why we have no great master- 
pieces of the human form, is because the 
opportunities to study it are so limited. 

Climate, our complex civilization, the 
extreme rarity of high beauty combined 
with equally high intelligence and refine- 
ment, have all helped to this result. It 
is no doubt useless to speak of blame or 

24 



remedy; but the fact remains, and with 
it, its inevitable results. 

One direct result of this want of op- 
portunity is want of appreciation. 

Every year we grow more keen and 
truthful in literary and musical appre- 
hension and criticism. The reason is 
plain ; the opportunities are constant for 
forming a true sense of the beautiful in 
these things. We absorb the elements of 
it in the air that we breathe — we may 
live in it if we will. 

In the great art of landscape painting 
the opportunities to study are world 
wide. 

Eyes alone are necessary. The hills 
and the sea, the plain and the stars, may 
not be hidden away and revealed alone 
at the price of so much an hour, and 
then with an imputation cast upon their 
immortal glory and purity. He who 
25 



steeps his soul in their beauties does so 
with a freedom as wide and deep as their 
own. 

He pays the price, it is true. But it 
is the price that beauty must always 
exact — of worshiping patience, of ly- 
ing in wait for moods of surpassing but 
evanescent beauty. 

The price of intense work and intense 
idleness. Understand me. The great- 
est artist, be he poet, sculptor, painter, or 
musician, is the man — or woman — who 
lives most and feels most : — the man — 
or woman — whose mental, spiritual, and 
physical organization is so exquisite, 
that he seems to have a thousand pores 
where others have one, by which to ab- 
sorb, and a thousand nerves by which to 
enjoy life, as he gathers it from the ele- 
ments about him. 

"Were it not for the irresistible, posi- 

26 



tive necessity of creating which alter- 
nately comes to such an one, he could 
remain passive, motionless, dumb, for 
whole periods of time — outwardly and 
apparently — but in reality silently ab- 
sorbed in an intensity of living : — 
thought, emotion, delight, pain, exquis- 
ite realizations, surging through him; 
borne in upon his soul by every breath 
of nature. 

Such are the silence and inertia of 
genius; this the "intense idleness" of 
which I spoke — until there floods in the 
tide of creation. The world understands 
the action, but seldom the idleness; 
whereas, in truth, the one exhausts the 
vital forces fully as much as the other. 

But such an one alone finds the re- 
ward. 

Upon such a worshiper alone does 
Nature flash the magnificent storms of 
27 



her deep heart — or, in the hush, reveal 
the tender mysteries of her beauty. 

And shall beauty in its highest man- 
ifestation — the human form — be less 
exacting and less coy than beauty in this 
great dumb Nature about us? 

Do not dream it. The pen falters in 
any attempt to express this — the deep- 
est, central thought of all art. 

The ground is too holy for common 
treading. But when the time comes — 
and the man — " whose eyes are his 
soul ; ' ' who, with bared head and unshod 
feet, shall pass behind the veil ; who shall 
gaze with reverent eyes upon God man- 
ifest in His glorious temple of the flesh ; 
then we shall have art. 

To him, few words will be possible; 
but when, emerging from the cloud that 
veils the divine, he lifts his hand to the 
dumb clay, shall it not give answer to 

28 



the great passion of dumbness which 
grapples it; and, springing into life un- 
der his touch, render immortal, the im- 
mortal conception of such a moment? 

But such can only be the works of 
free men — free in the highest sense of 
the word — that of full harmony with 
the deep forces of Nature, whose law is 
obedience. 

Not the freedom of riotous convulsion, 
but the freedom of the tender leaf, that 
trembles with delicate life amid the 
tremendous but perfectly balanced forces 
above it, below it, and within it. 

So only may they be free "to track 
suggestion to her inmost cell." 

So only — the whole man being flung 
into the crucible of art; for he can re- 
serve nothing — so only, through the 
blood red and purple deeps of all knowl- 
edge and all experience, he shall pass, 
29 



step by step, until to him it is given to 
combine them all into the smiting white 
ray of a purity, an innocence, and a 
truth, ineffable. 

And what will he prove? That, 
"Love strikes higher with his lambent 

flame, 
Than art can pile the faggots." 



With the Greeks — as it must be with 
us — the human form was the basis of 
all art. To them, what was not human 
was not divine. 

Here lies a deep well of truth, and 
these are some of the hints of God which 
art can give us. 

In nature, in all life, human or other- 
wise, no two corresponding parts are 
precisely similar. 

No two leaves are alike ; the two sides 
of the same leaf are not alike. Faces 

30 



are not alike; the same face has differ- 
ences on the corresponding sides; no 
right hand is the facsimile of its fellow ; 
it is the same with the two halves of 
the body. 

The law of Nature is unending diver- 
sity in the midst of regularity; a mul- 
titude of varying details grasped and 
held in perfect harmony by the central 
idea. The mind may follow out this 
analogy to the bounds of thought. 

As this is God's law in nature, it must 
be the law in Art, or Art will fail. 



It is only by studying truth of pro- 
portion that perfection is reached either 
in life or in art; and the material per- 
fection is ever suggesting a correspond- 
ing spiritual perfection. 

True grandeur is always found in 
31 



faultless proportions, and great effects 
may be obtained with very simple means. 



The intense love of form, the desire 
to embody it in lasting materials, is per- 
haps the strongest expression that can 
be found of the human desire to have 
and to hold. 

To the true sculptor, nothing is with- 
out form or void. All that he knows or 
dreams of beauty; all that he believes 
of goodness and of God, surges within 
him towards an outward expression in 
form, and until it is fixed before his 
eyes in tangible shape he cannot rest. 

This is God's own way of working. 
"We do not read that He primarily cre- 
ated music or poetry or any of the arts, 
but we do read that He created first of 
all — form — and that the image of it 
was His own. 

32 



Such high warrant, then, may the 
noble art of sculpture claim; that its 
burning and dominant impulse is a 
spark of that which created the visible 
universe; and let the sculptor and his 
work be reverenced accordingly. 

It asks nothing of the ages that roll 
by ; it has no need. 

Simplicity, cast like a transparent veil 
over profundity of insight is its everlast- 
ing garb. 

Nations may vanish and the face of 
the world be changed ; but the statue and 
the poem remain, to be cherished while 
the race survives. 

The power which the noblest sculpture 
possesses over the human sensibilities 
may be traced readily to its sources. 

Humanity is weak, full of effort and 
insufficiency. Art, to be art, must strike 
a note above and beyond all this ; it must 
33 



show something of God — or it is not 
art. 

It must show strength, with unmeas- 
ured capacity for action ; but this capac- 
ity must be in repose ; we want no effort, 
but a belief that the force is more than 
equal to its work. 

From this strength and repose, will 
most naturally arise dignity and sweet- 
ness; for, where the supremacy is un- 
doubted, there can be no fear to disturb 
and no jealousy to distort. Simplicity 
will follow as naturally as morning fol- 
lows the sun, for, with the elimination 
of all contradictory elements, all diverg- 
ent peculiarities, the work is relieved of 
embarrassments and proceeds with a sin- 
gle intention to its end. 

"If thine eye be single, thy whole 
body shall be full of light." 

Ideal beauty is thus largely defined by 

34 



negations and attained only by thorough 
self-restraint and conscientiousness. The 
moral strength and purity which it can- 
not but express under these conditions 
will be seen at once; and the influence 
for good of what is called "high art" 
affords the only measure of the influence 
for evil that is exercised by a vicious 
and degraded art. 

The dignity which sculpture possesses 
to those who are thoroughly imbued with 
its spirit and love is beyond expression. 

Its utter sincerity and truth ; its scorn 
of difficulties and shams; the narrow 
path it is compelled to tread in choice of 
subject and treatment of that subject; 
the difficulties of material which must be 
overcome ; and the weight of the artistic 
vision — which is at times too exhausting 
for flesh to endure — render it an art to 
be peculiarly reverenced. 
35 



We need no personal details in the 
history of Phidias, for by his works we 
know him. 

He must have been a man who had 
mastered generally, and with a profound 
knowledge of principles, the learning of 
the Greeks. 

His spirit must have been equal to 
and kindred with that of Homer ; for by 
the lines of his chisel he expressed ma- 
terially the beauty and majesty which 
Homer presented to the mind alone. 

He must have been a man of purity 
and uprightness of life, or the purity 
and severity of his work would have been 
impossible; he must have been sincere, 
for not a sham nor a trick is to be found 
in anything that bears the mark of his 
hand; and the utter self-abnegation of 
his art will be appreciated when it is 
remembered that to him and his co- 

36 



workers it was not permitted to inscribe 
their names upon the statues of the im- 
mortal gods, which were the work of 
their hands. Where such inscriptions 
exist they are supposed to be of later 
date. 

Finally, he stamped his age and his 
art with a standard of perfection to 
which the succeeding generations must 
bring their work as to a tribunal. 

Think a moment; he lived and died 
twenty-four centuries ago, and the works 
that he left have never been equalled or 
approached by any other man. 

Is not that a fame which can truly 
be called immortal? 



It is far easier to find a flaw than to 
appreciate a beauty, and the latter re- 
quires more refinement of knowledge and 
more sincerity of soul. 
37 



Any one can criticise ; few can appre- 
ciate. 

The highest art and the highest life 
can both be more nearly approximated 
by steady contemplation of the heights 
which are to be gained than by too much 
searching into the pits that are to be 
avoided. 



As we find in architecture that the 
most perfect results are obtained with 
the least waste of material, and that per- 
fection is reached only when nothing can 
be added and nothing can be taken away 
without harm done to the whole — thus 
uniting perfect economy with perfect 
richness — the moral aspect of the study 
will begin to dawn upon us. 

When we find that strength and sim- 
plicity, with evident directness of pur- 
pose must be the foundation upon which 

38 



is laid beautiful ornamentation, this mor- 
ality of art will deepen its impression. 

And when we find that weakness of 
purpose, over-profuseness of ornamenta- 
tion, falseness to the requirements of 
material, are always sure signs of decay, 
we can understand how vicious bad art 
may be. 

And in these signs may be read, as in 
an open book, the moral temper of a 
nation. 

It will gradually grow clear how all 
the arts are governed essentially by the 
same principle of truth, purity, and ex- 
act adaptation of means to ends. 

And when the mind is full of the ex- 
amples with which this study overflows 
of the exactions of great art, viz : sever- 
est truth, plainest purpose, most rigid 
economy; and when we see these made 
the handmaidens of perfect beauty ; and 
39 



together achieving that perfect balance, 
that exquisite poise to which nothing 
can be added and from which nothing 
can be taken away, we shall not need to 
ask what is the use of studying the his- 
tory and principles and spirit of true 
art. 

You will not need that any one should 
tell you what you may see for yourselves, 
that the arts are so many different av- 
enues for the expression of that part of 
man's nature which takes hold upon and 
demands as its right, the things that are 
unseen and eternal; and by raising us 
above the actualities of life give us the 
best grasp upon those very actualities. 

You will see how by much training in 
these superb studies the mind is raised 
and habituated to what is strong, pure, 
and beautiful. 

How with this training the mind, and 

40 



heart, and even physical sense, grow in- 
stinctively to reject whatever is weak, 
degraded and ugly. 

Therefore, instead of resulting in a 
want of practicality, it subserves the 
highest wants of our nature. 

From all this you will see that this 
study is not one for entertainment only, 
but one that cannot be apprehended at 
all unless the most serious and earnest 
attention is given to it. 

You will see that men of genius — 
artists — work, not for the diversion, nor 
even the instruction of others, but sim- 
ply because they must give expression 
to so much of God as dwells within them ; 
knowing that those who have eyes will 
see, those that have ears will hear, and 
those that have feet will follow. 

Eemembering all this you will never 
make the mistake of looking upon art as 
41 



a toy and a diversion merely — as a 
fringe upon the garment of life — but 
instead, you will appreciate that it is 
composed of threads that are the very 
warp and woof of all truest, noblest, and 
highest living; and that it can only be 
apprehended from this entirely serious 
point of view. 



42 



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